Druids and Their Magic in Early Ireland: Clouds, Stars, Ogham and Bull's Blood June 18, 2009

Druids appear frequently in the rich saga literature of Early Ireland, engaged in a variety of eerie magical practices: clairvoyance, psychometry, cloud-divination, shape-shifting, and going into prophetic trances wrapped in the dripping hides of freshly-slaughtered bulls. And yet these actions, superficially so powerfully redolent of the pagan past, occur within literary texts which are products of a profoundly Christian, Bible-saturated medieval culture. How did early Irish monk-litterateurs envision the magic of their one-time rivals, the druids, and why on earth was imagining pagan magic of any interest for these 'saints and acholars'? Mark Williams of the University of Cambridge attempts to provide some answers.

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